Well, if we focu on their recent sins, in 1985 the French government bombed the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, which was in French Polynesia to protest French above-ground nuclear testing. Moreover, France is responsible for a great deal of political and economic mischief-making in Africa, where it props up some truely heinous regimes to maintain the last ragged vestiges of empire.
They are also guilty, through unleashing the works of Jacques Lacan and Claude Levi-Strauss, among others, and thus spawing generations of half-baked theorizing by American academics.
They are also responsible for the films of Gerard Depardieu.
Yes, these approaches are quite different. Which of them is France is pursuing?
France has not proposed any realistic alternative peaceful avenues to explore. They simply oppose action at every turn. It looks to me as though they are indeed pursuing a policy of appeasement, although they haven’t quite come right out and said so. Appeasement has advantages; I’m not using that word as an automatic pejorative. I don’t favor that policy vis-a-vis Iraq right now, because it will likely result in their acquisition of a nuclear arsenal, with potentially terrible consequences.
P.S. There must be a whole class of familiar epithets that acquire a whole new meaning with the change of one letter. Yours is a good start.
And three more guesses as to why the French oppose action against Iraq so strenuously? It ain’t for humanitarian reasons, their record in Africa proves they don’t care about that. It’s because most of the equipment used to manufacture WMD says “Fait en France” on the label.
Eh, the French are a lot like Americans except they don’t have the military or economic power to back up their policies. Talking a lot of smack when you’re a little guy is, well, funny.
Having said that, I have to say I like the French. I like the way their eyes bug out every time the US president says something silly. I like how they torch McD’s and go on strike what seems like every other week. I like that they eat wierd stuff (SNAILS?! What starving peon-type came up with that one?!) and make movies that I have to be on acid to understand. They make me laugh and shake my head at the same time (I remember laughing so hard during the opening ceremonies at a recent Olympics that I couldn’t breath–it looked like the French actors were wearing gigantic condoms on their heads filled with helium–freakin hilarious). I think the world would be a more boring place without them in it. Here’s to 'em!
Well, to be fair, Parisians (and Europeans, in general) talked quite a bit of smack to me when I was the only American in the cafe or pub. Never heard a peep from them when some of these same people were surrounded by my fellow Americans. It runs both ways.
And you know what? I have no sympathy for the Europeans. Based on my experiences, an American in Europe will encounter a much more bigoted attitude towards them than European travellers encounter in the States.
Neurotik, you’re absolutely right. I have encountered much of the same “smack-talk” in my own travels. Sometimes it made for some interesting debate; other times I simply had to shrug my shoulders and walk away.
The problem is that any kind of “bigoted attitude” can be very dangerous and destructive. One of the reasons that so many people outside of the U.S. hate us so much and wish us harm is their misconception of “all Americans.”
It does indeed go both ways. But neither is acceptable and both will only bring further ruin to this world.
Francesca, I can’t say I know your background other than that you currently live in France. You write suberbly in English, but I don’t even know if you are a native English speaker, or have lived for any length of time in America.
If you haven’t, you may not understand that one of America’s great unifiers is trashing France. Young or old, Liberal or Conservative, Americans many stripes will joyfully pile on and chuckle gleefully as they one-up another in French insults.
Why? Well, really, it’s all France’s fault. It dares not to toe the American line. It dares to make its own calls in the international arena. Even worse, it dares to publicly disagree, frequently, with American policies and politicians. Other than the former Soviet Union and the rest of the “Eastern Bloc”, no other country has come close to France in terms of what many Americans would say is “Spitting in America’s face.” Well, maybe Cuba, but they’re counted as Eastern bloc too.
Man, we hate that.
I say this as explanation for why your perfect justified rant about the injustice of insults to France has turned into kind of a verbal lynching of France.
This attitude is fundamental to why we invade or covertly intervene in countries with incredible frequency. We are so righteous, we want to “fix” everything and everyone who disagrees. To me, this is the scariest and worst thing about being an American.
Probably most of the posts in this thread were made with a more lighthearted attitude. But when I read them, tired and a bit down after working overtime everyday for a week, I see them as reflections of the parlor-room charm and wit of The Ugly American.
[French accent] Hello? Itchy and Scratchy Land open for business. Who are you to resist it, huh? Come on. My last paycheck bounced. My children need wine!
But let’s not forget that all humor is based on the premise that something’s funny because it happened to some other bastard and not to ourselves.
The French and the British had the opportunity to stop Hitler before he invaded Poland, and didn’t do it. (Hell, the French could have sent a small armed patrol into the Rhineland, IIRC, and the Nazi’s would have pulled back.) When the Nazi’s invaded France, the French government didn’t stand up and make pronouncements to fight for France to the last man, no, they folded up like a house of cards, against the wishes of their own people! “Cheese-eating surrender monkeys” isn’t mocking the French for giving up in the face of the Nazi’s (they didn’t, the French Resistance was a major thorn in Hitler’s side), it’s a way of fighting back the fear that one day, we too, could find ourselves in a situation where our own government leaders betray us in a cowardly attempt to save their own skins and end up causing more pain and suffering for us, than if they’d issued a call to arms.
Just read that a French newspaper had a photo from the Ivory Coast, where France has sent troops into the middle of the rebellion. The photo has an Ivorian holding a sign pleading for Bush to intervene and calling Chirac a butcher.
…and three guesses who sold the Iraqis the defensive capability with which they failed to defend the plant. Furthermore, the French government sold Israel its nuclear power plant at Dimona (from which the Israelis created their illegal nukes).
It dares not to toe the American line. It dares to make its own calls in the international arena. Even worse, it dares to publicly disagree, frequently, with American policies and politicians. Other than the former Soviet Union and the rest of the “Eastern Bloc”, no other country has come close to France in terms of what many Americans would say is “Spitting in America’s face.” Well, maybe Cuba, but they’re counted as Eastern bloc too.